


継承 or The Tale Of The Ugly Duckling

by Splittergheist



Category: Stray (2019)
Genre: Gen, Hurt No Comfort, I will carry this fandom alone if I must, Mentioned Abuse, Mentioned Assault, Parental Abuse, Slam Poetry, Ugly Duckling, i broke my own heart writing this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-03-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:14:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23332948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Splittergheist/pseuds/Splittergheist
Summary: A small slam-poetry-esque thing I wrote about Jin Oshiro, because he deserves the world and his mother is a horrible human being.
Kudos: 3





	継承 or The Tale Of The Ugly Duckling

**Author's Note:**

> ;w; I broke my own heart while writing this, so now you have to suffer too. did I make up new English slang for this? you bet I did. this is the fic to inflict the hurt, so I have more motivation to start writing fix-it fics soon.

**継承 [けいしょう; keɪ'ʃuː]**

**(1) I N H E R I T A N C E**  
[ɪnˈher.ɪ.təns] _noun_ — do you know the tale of the ugly duckling? of how the supposed duck is called the ugliest by all the others? his siblings, the other birds at the farm, even his own mother wishes sometimes for him to _never have been born_. of how he runs away, unable to take it any longer as horribly ugly and unloved as he feels? while geese and wild ducks are shot from the skies, he remains unharmed, even when the hound comes looking for any living birds it can tear apart, because even to the dog, the 'duckling' is too ugly to be eaten.

or how he then finds shelter in a small cabin where an elderly woman lives with a cat and a hen? how they tell him he is worth nothing if he can't lay eggs or purr like them, so he leaves again as the water calls him to swim? when he sees the swans for the first time, he feels like he's found something he's been searching for for so long already, and when the winter falls he freezes in the lake until he's saved by another human family. 

do you remember how he is ready to _die_ when he meets the swans again in spring, until he realizes he's one of them, and has always _been_ one of them? and how everyone calls him the most beautiful swan and he feels nearly unable to deal with it? how he is _happy_ for the first time in his life?

 **(2) M A G I C**  
[ˈmædʒ.ɪk] _noun_ — this time around the duckling is a boy, young and humble and so full of curiosity and love, he protects his mother from impending assault when he is but **nine** years old. it's not greyish feathers that make her wish he was never born, it's the black smoke, deadly and fiery, that turns the attacker's arm to **ash** , so unlike the magic she carries in her veins, the exact opposite of it, even.

the mockery comes in form of beatings, of yelling and screaming; she keeps him away from the world, attempting to turn his magic beautiful, convinced that trauma would bring forth the _true_ , the _expected_ form of his _keishou_. until the age of 13, he has never played a videogame, barely ever gotten the medicine he'd have needed, and is home-schooled. it's not him who runs away, but his mother who abandons him in the middle of a park in tokyo to immigrate to the US with another child on the way.

given from fosterparent to fosterparent, struggling with authority and the offered care, he never lives anywhere long enough to bond with any of those adoptive parents or foster-siblings. he is barely able to taste love or experience a regular teenhood, when he turns 18, then 21, and is expected to take care of himself. the first winter spent on the streets of tokyo nearly kills him, and the kind women of the _spring-seller house_ next door take him in and feed him, but if he doesn't intend to work _there_ and sell himself, he can't stay for longer than the winter lasts.

 **(3) D E A T H**  
[deθ] _noun_ — twenty long years trickle into the land until he feels able to face the woman once called his mother. there are no swans he can turn to, nobody who possesses the same gifts as he does. he is no mistaken white feather that's been called duckling all his life, he is the **death** to his mother when she refuses to even listen to him, to even _consider_ to reconnect, no matter how ready he is to **forgive** her for all the horrible, horrible things she's done to him because that's what abuse does to people. 

in his own smoke-black eyes, he is the **monster** she has called him time and time again, because not only does he _believe_ her by then, but also does he _kill_ her, the mother who never was one outside of biological technicalities. and the first time he thinks he's found another swan - his sister - and hopes to run away with her and finally get his happily ever after, she _betrays him too_ , in fear of what he might do to her or others if she doesn't stop him. 

this duckling's life ends not with love and healing and support, with swans to fill up his love-starved heart and give him the time to get used to the beauty he now possesses and call him one of their own with no other requirements than that; it ends just how his mother has prophesied: alone, unloved and deeply hurt by someone he cared about, someone so similar to him, and someone who has suffered under the same woman — someone he thought _loved him too_. 


End file.
